It’s a story we know well. A bright-eyed, sexually inexperienced girl falls for a man in a position of power. She’s shy but he’s mesmerised – he’s never met a girl like her before. She loses her virginity and calls it Love. But he has a secret past, it’s only a matter of time before it comes back to haunt him. He fucks up, but he’s sorry. She’s crying, but he’s sorry. He’s fucked in the head, he can prove it – and does, tells her everything about his troubled past. It’s not him, it’s history, it’s ingrained. But he loves her and he’s sorry; he’s never met a girl like her before. Through tears she – still young and inexperienced, despite all the Love they’ve been having recently – forgives him.

It’s a story we all know well because we’ve seen countless films, sang along to countless songs, and read countless books which tell it. It’s a story we know well because we’ve seen countless women around us taken advantage of in the same way. So why do we keep telling it?

Eimear McBride’s second novel, The Lesser Bohemians (2016), is more of the same. The blurb claims this is a ‘story of love and innocence … the grip of the past and the struggle to be new again’, but should say ‘this is Fifty Shades of Grey for intellectuals’.

The Lesser Bohemians, set in 1994/5, is about Eily, an eighteen-year-old coming to London to pursue acting, but ending up chasing thirty-eight-year-old Stephen – who has a past. The novel mostly takes place in Stephen’s bed, in their embrace, and features all the classic scenes, from him coercing her into losing her virginity, to him coming inside her (and then being very sorry), to finally breaking it off with her by saying – after months of inappropriate behaviour – ‘I love you … but you’re eighteen and that’s not right’. Correct.

What is so special about The Lesser Bohemians is just how good the writing is. McBride weaves a sentence like the most revolutionary of seamstresses. This is a book for people who are captivated by visceral and tender descriptions of sexuality, who delight in exploring a character from the very inside of their being. For half the book we are right there with Eily, reliving the physical pain and emotional excitement of discovering a city and another person for the first time. It’s a beautiful demonstration of how strongly we feel when we are young, and the book would be perfect if it wasn’t for Stephen.

At the halfway point the voice changes, the focus shifts to Stephen’s backstory and, as truly horrific as it is, by this point it’s difficult to forgive him everything – Stephen is a bad man, and it doesn’t matter that he knows it. The language would have us believe we are still with Eily, that we are hearing him through her, but then she says ‘This is not my story … or time for upset’. Just like that, the man with the power takes over and commands attention on him.

In August 2017 The Lesser Bohemians won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. In October of the same year the Me Too movement, originally initiated in 2006, awoke and took hold of the internet and film industry. The irony of Eily’s troubling romance winning a literary prize the same year that women joined forces in a reckoning against sexual assault should not be lost on us. As so many people fight to hold abusers accountable and change the status quo, we need to ask: is this really the time to be publishing this book?

What role do publishers need to play in this discussion? To censor would be a huge step backwards for the publishing industry; we have a strong history of fighting censorship. But perhaps giving these stories a platform time and time again, under the guise of literary genius, is not the correct response either.

It would be naïve to think that the Me Too movement doesn’t extend to the publishing industry. In 2018 no book will be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature as the board try to find the best way to respond to allegations of sexual assault by one of the members. Female writers Zini Clemmons, Carmen Maria Machado and Monica Byrne have all recently accused Junot Díaz of sexual misconduct. Publishing is culture; the world’s greatest movements are all safeguarded in books. Gender dynamics – which make it seemingly okay for men like Stephen to hurt girls like Eily – are shifting, very very slowly, and not in every country yet, but surely. Books that win literary prizes and are given a voice should reflect this change. We are part of the conversation too. Don’t we, as publishers, have a responsibility to look at stories like The Lesser Bohemians and say ‘enough’?

The Lesser Bohemians is a complicated book with two well-rounded characters. My brief review does not do Stephen justice – by the end you really root for him to find peace, but that’s not going to come from an eighteen-year-old. McBride has been enjoying good reviews, all concentrating on her masterful writing. In the New York Times, Jeanette Winterson praises the book immensely, but also writes ‘If the writing were terrible, we’d be in “Fifty Shades” territory’. Winterson – even by pointing this out you prove that we are.

Charisma doesn’t excuse abusive behaviour, just like good writing doesn’t excuse a problematic story. McBride is a true artist, and I’m not suggesting we boycott her work. But, in the wake of Me Too, it’s time for publishers to join the conversation and take more care in the content we bring forward, otherwise we are on the wrong side of the fight.

‘Read more’ – it’s advice every aspiring writer and editor has no doubt heard countless times. But what should we be reading? Fortunately for us, many excellent writers, editors and literary critics (basically professional readers) have taken the time to write about their practice. In Draft No. 4, John McPhee shares his thoughts on field research and structure in nonfiction writing.

Draft No. 4, John McPheeText Publishing, 2017$29.99

John McPhee distils writing advice from a long career as a journalist writing for the New Yorker and Time magazine, among other publications. This is a gossipy book full of anecdotes about encountering bears in Alaska, rafting down rivers, hopping on trains and trucks, all for the sake of a good story. For these stories alone, the book is worth a read, but McPhee’s advice is also refreshingly practical, as he takes the reader through his writing process, letting us see how he resolves challenges. His advice for overcoming writer’s block seems genuinely helpful: write a letter to your mum explaining what you’re trying to write and where you’re struggling – then keep going.

Contemporary writers may feel a tad jealous about the freedom, time (often months) and resources McPhee was given to research and write articles—luxuries few writers could dream of today in the fast-paced, constantly updating world of internet journalism. Even if such timeframes are unrealistic for most writers now, there is a valuable lesson to be learned from McPhee’s process about taking the time to really reflect on material, letting ideas simmer and thinking about how to go about writing something before putting pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard).

McPhee has an idiosyncratic approach to structure and uses strange swirling diagrams to illustrate his methods. For McPhee, an article or book begins with research, then structure comes in to organise all the disparate ideas and stories gathered along the way. According to McPhee: ‘You can build a structure in such a way that is causes people to want to keep turning pages. A compelling structure in nonfiction can have an attracting effect analogous to a story line in fiction’ (20). Yet, despite the primacy of structure, it should ‘be about as visible as someone’s bones,’ and should always emerge from the material, rather than twisting the material to suit the structure (34).

The act of writing is often portrayed as something that comes from a moment of divine inspiration, a communion with the writing muse. Maybe this is because many writers don’t want to pull back the curtain to reveal the mechanical, messy processes behind creativity; or maybe they can’t find the words to talk about their process in a useful wa y. McPhee has no such qualms; he happily shares his thoughts about how he figures out what goes where, about text-editing software and editing techniques, and about the proper way to use a dictionary. McPhee emphasises writing as a craft, with a methodical process behind it and based on concrete considerations about structure. It is reassuring to see that a craft-based writing method can, equally, yield creative, successful writing.

This piece was originally published in Pulse – BSP’s 2017 nonfiction anthology.

Erasure, also known as ‘found poetry’ or ‘found art’, is an art form where a person erases words from an existing piece in order to create new meaning in an existing work or to create a new piece of writing all together. The act of crossing out and erasing allows the reader and writer of this new form to ask questions of the piece. Is this new work a piece of vandalism? Does it disparage or celebrate the original work? Some works aim to subvert the original meaning of a text and some aim to decrease the trace of authorship and authority that the writer has over the text.

These works of erasure were made out of the pages of the novel Grey by E.L. James. I couldn’t find any books from the original Fifty Shades trilogy in my local Salvos, so Grey had to do. I felt dirty spending any money on having this thing in my possession – actively choosing to bring it into my life. At the register I tried to hide it from the cashier beneath the skirt and pair of jeans that I was also buying but, of course, he saw it. I felt the need to tell him that I wasn’t actually going to read it, I was going to destroy it, for art, you see? It’s all very artistic and highbrow, that’s the point actually, taking something so lowbrow and turning it into something meaningful. I didn’t tell him any of this though, I just took my dirty book and my new/old clothes and left with the intention of trying to make something beautiful out of this thing that I found incredibly offensive and damaging.

I went home and opened the book up to a sex scene and started redacting. I made one page say ‘do / my / jeans / up’ and fondly titled it Fifty Shades of Beige.

The censorship of explicit content is a common practice, especially the censorship of sexual content and even more so that of female sexual content. Something that James’s novels are full of. My aim was not to redact the female pleasure in these pages but the male gaze and control of these acts. I wanted to get rid of Christian Grey, and every time he thought the words ‘good girl’ I wanted him gone even more.

I did all kinds of experiments in erasure on the pages of this text. I hated it so much I couldn’t stand the words being there, beside my bed, covered in Sharpie ink, yes, but not covered enough. I crossed out everything except that which was explicit. I redacted every word except all of the ‘fuck’s on the page (and there were a lot of ‘fuck’s). I crossed out every word except the words that described the female body until it read:

I got rid of every time Christian Grey tells us about fucking her, this woman, this object of his desire; I erased him completely until only she was left.

By deleting words from a piece of writing, it is easy to manipulate or distort the meaning of the original author if that is your intention. By simply crossing out a ‘not’ or reducing ‘doesn’t’ to ‘does’, erasure has the power to alter the spirit of a work through omission. In this way erasure is often spoken about as re-writing a text, but sometimes the aim is to remove all trace of the original work, the authorship and authority behind it to create something completely new.

I used this method of erasure on Grey. I took a sex scene and reduced it to ‘Fuck / holding / on / to / control / over / losing myself / brave / and /unfamiliar’. Another one became:

This manipulation of words reminded me how much language is malleable. We change it all the time, we take something old and we make it new. Words go in and out of vogue, they were once used to offend and then were adopted and reclaimed and their meaning became stronger, the narrative has shifted. In erasing words from this novel I’m shifting the narrative from being about an unhealthy relationship that is presented as something that the reader should want, to celebrating female sexuality and the female body. The body that women are forever being told to cover up, that they are sluts for wanting it (that they are sluts for not wanting it), that theiy’re bodies are indecent. She is forever being erased. Creating erasure poetry is a cathartic exercise, especially when making it out of something you hate. It allows us to correct, to rewrite, to create big, satisfying negative spaces. It allows us to highlight what we think is important and bring those, who are constantly being lessened – erased – by the media, to the forefront.

This wouldn’t be a dash debate if I didn’t bring out nineteenth century American poet Emily Dickinson as a case study. Dickinson was famous – or perhaps, infamous – for gratuitous dashing. One critic, R. W. Franklin, argued that there was no logical system behind her idiosyncratic dashes, writing that they ‘were merely a habit of handwriting’ and Dickinson ‘used them inconsistently, without … special significance’. But, upon a closer look at Dickinson’s poetry, this claim is tenuous. It’s hard to argue that her punctuation is unintentional when it’s been put to such dramatic use.

Dickinson’s Poem 465 (‘I heard a Fly buzz – when I died’) is a shining example of her distinctive dashing. She embraces the multiplicity of the dash, using it to join and fragment words and phrases, but also as a mark of silence, of censorship. Take the final stanza:

With Blue – uncertain – stumbling Buzz –

Between the light – and me –

And then the Windows failed – and then

I could not see to see –

Dickinson uses the disjointed dash – so criticised by Malone – to full effect. Dashes separate ‘With Blue – uncertain – stumbling Buzz –’ and the words stagger unevenly onward, rhythmically evoking the image of the bumbling fly, which comes ‘Between the light – and me –’ where ‘the light’ and ‘me’ are literally divided, driven apart by the interjecting dash. When finally the speaker ‘could not see to see –’, the poem ends on a dash; death interrupts, the dash evoking both the act of being silenced and a sense of moving forward. It retains the possibility of connecting to more – it has none of the sombre finality of a period.

Franklin’s mistake was trying to impose a logical system upon Dickinson’s dashes. While the purpose of punctuation may ostensibly be to marry logic and language to create clarity, Dickinson uses punctuation to subvert convention, disrupt language and create new meaning. Analysing her poetry from a purely sense-making perspective erases the figure of Dickinson, the Rogue Writer, out to shake up the English language with rebellious dashes and anarchic capitalisation.

This anarchy has historically quite upset editors of Dickinson’s work, who tried to bring order to her poetry, forcing conventional punctuation standards onto her writing. In early editions of Dickinson’s poetry, her daring dashes are hidden away in a shameful corner of the cutting room floor as editors brought structure to her disorderly diction.

You could reject this as editors overstepping into interventionist territory. But, in her essay on Dickinson’s punctuation, academic Kamilla Denman writes that Dickinson ‘was her own rigorous, if unconventional editor’. Denman describes how Dickinson would change word groupings, separating and connecting them and ‘never allowing words to remain static or in static relationship with other words’. This laborious self-editing evokes a sense of perpetual forward motion—Dickinson was always pushing language, testing its limits, forging ahead – dashes in hand – into a brave new world of irritatingly fragmented emails and interestingly fragmented literature.

To those about to dash—

Dickinson is clear example of why Truss is right to balk at a blanket ban on the dash. If we, as writers and editors, disown the dash, what potential literary delights might we be smothering? Do we want to be that intrusive editor – do we want to be Franklin, imposing logic to the detriment of interpretation? Or do we want to be Dickinson, taking language – and punctuation – beyond the standard, beyond the conventional, and into the unknowable future –

The dash is a multifarious mark, capable of great good and, some argue, great evil. We see dashes all over modern writing – from emails, to literature, to online op-eds on their overuse. Writers and editors alike seem divided by this symbol – arguing over when to use it, how to use it and if anyone should use it at all. What is it about this horizontal that is so controversial?

A dash of history

Etymologically, the dash has its roots in the verb ‘to dash’, meaning to strike violently, derived from the Middle English ‘dasshen’, meaning to knock, hurl or break. The very roots of the word reinforce the nature of this punctuation mark, which interrupts and interjects as suddenly and strikingly as one might ‘dasshen’ a medieval spear.

The dash has evolved over the centuries. Dashes have been used for everything from denoting dialogue (as in James Joyce’s Ulysses), to censoring letters and words (to the point of ‘dash’ becoming a near profanity itself), to sitting merrily alongside commas, colons, semicolons and periods to create the ‘commash’ and its hybrid kin (quirky dashes that grew in popularity in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries before fizzling out in the nineteenth century and falling into disuse by the twentieth).

The advent of the typewriter, and the need to fit letters and typographical marks on a single keyboard, introduced new dash variants. Because there were not enough keys to include every different length of dash, the dashlike-but-not-quite ‘hyphen-minus’ was introduced. Keith Houston, in his book Shady Characters, writes that typograpny ‘suffered an ignominious blow: from a suite of dashes for every occasion, writers were reduced to using and reusing this single character wherever any faintly dashlike symbol might ordinarily have appeared’. These restrictions forced the use of such em-dash imposters as the spaced hyphen and the unspaced double hyphen. Today most word processors automatically insert the appropriate dash to replace such typographic trespasses.

Dash discourse—debates, discussion and disputes

Perhaps the em alternatives that cropped up during the hyphen-minus kerfuffle contributed to the ongoing argument that runs rampant in editorial circles today: the unspaced em versus the spaced en. But the dash discourse goes beyond the ‘em or en’ debate – some feel very strongly about modern society’s burgeoning tendency towards over-dashing.

Philip Corbett, in his piece for the New York Times, ‘Dashes Everywhere’ writes that the dash ‘can seem like a tic; worse yet, it can indicate a profusion of overstuffed and loosely constructed sentences bulging with parenthetical additions and asides.’ Noreen Malone agrees in an article for Slate, writing:

'The problem with the dash—as you may have noticed!—is that it discourages truly efficient writing. It also—and this might be its worst sin—disrupts the flow of a sentence. Don’t you find it annoying—and you can tell me if you do, I won’t be hurt—when a writer inserts a thought into the midst of another one that’s not yet complete?'

According to Lynne Truss in her book Eats, Shoots and Leaves, some see dashes as ‘the enemy of grammar’ because of their overuse in online communication and tendency to act as a catch-all punctuation mark. But Truss argues that there’s still a place for attention-seeking punctuation like the dash: ‘I can’t help thinking, in its defence, that our system of punctuation is limited enough already without us dismissing half of it as rubbish’. There’s a danger in completely disregarding the benefits of a wide variety of punctuation. Malone demonstrates a disruptive – and yes, annoying – overabundance of dashes. But that very disjointedness can be used to great deliberate effect – in fact, Malone does use it this way.

Malone mentions a friend who ‘thinks of the parenthesis as a whisper, and the dash as a way of calling attention to a phrase.’ This difference – the difference between a whisper and a shout – is important. Simply replacing dashes with other punctuation changes the tone and even meaning of a phrase or sentence. The possibilities that dashes present shouldn’t be quashed or tamed – but embraced, explored and expanded.

Santa Carla is an unassuming shop tucked away in Sparta Place – a pedestrian enclave of cafes, galleries and specialty shops that feels out of place amidst the bustling bridal district of Sydney Road. The first time I stumbled across it I felt like I had walked through a secret door into Narnia. Down the street from Santa Carla is a dog bathhouse where a canine blow wave treatment costs more than most human’s haircuts.

To brand Santa Carla as just a bookshop would be misleading of me. As well as books and comics it also stocks art, jewellery and gifts. The shop has a manifesto – championing independent work, mainly from Melbourne but also from outside Australia. It stocks only independent products and supports artists in the community by holding book launches and exhibitions.

The idea for the shop came from the owner Jode sitting around with her husband one night talking about all their favourite independent artists and producers. ‘We were talking about how great it would be if there was a shop that sold all our favourite artists’ work, 100 percent independent stuff.’ As we wandered around the shop together, Jode told me the story behind almost every book, graphic novel, and comic collection displayed on the shelves and tables. Every single product had a story. What sets Santa Carla apart from other bookshops is that Jode and her husband are so discerning with what products they stock. The result is a tightly curated collection of books and comics that give the shop an almost art gallery feel. They stock novels which are either fall, independent presses or self-published by the authors themselves. The focus is mainly on genre works, ranging from fantasy and sci-fi to noir. I didn’t recognise any of the covers I was browsing through, and I liked it. The prospect of being able to discover something I had never come across before and take it home with me felt special.

The graphic novels and comics on display encompass a range of art styles and genres. Interestingly, the comics are organised by audience age. The comics for all ages are displayed on one side while the comics for a more adult audience are up the other end, safe from children’s prying eyes with the counter as a handy buffer. ‘We generally don’t let children behind the counter so they don’t accidentally see something too old for them,’ Jode says. All the comics are independent and quite niche, so if you aren’t a comic aficionado you probably won’t recognise any titles, but if you ask Jode or her partner will explain their themes and stories, and recommend a series for you to try, just like they did for me.

So next time you’re in Brunswick and looking to escape the throng of bridal gowns and wedding invitation templates on Sydney Road, duck into Sparta Place into the world of independent art in all the many forms that art can take: stories and drawings, prints, jewellery and even DVDs, put together lovingly by passionate people. You could find something unique with a story behind it to cherish, take home with you, or give to a loved one. Or you could just find a really cool tote bag.

Speculate brings together fantasy and science fiction in an action-packed festival around the craft of writing. It’s hard to pinpoint when this literary festival began to take tentative shape – up until now the conversation was a farrago of questions:

‘Wouldn’t it be great to have more workshops on speculative fiction?’ ; ‘Wouldn’t it be great to have a festival just for speculative fiction?’ ; ‘Wouldn’t it be great if we just … made it happen?’

The amazing team from The Morning Bell Podcast have been the pioneers of Speculate, and I’ve been lucky enough to join them on this voyage. With the festival coming up this Saturday, and my time volunteering about to come to an end, this is the perfect time to look back at everything that has shaped my experience.

Emails

Building and maintaining work relationships with a range of individuals has been my main role. I need to anticipate communication issues before they happen and make sure we’re all on the same page. If not, I need to turn back a couple pages and see what happened. As I am the main contact for the guests and their publishers, I’m mostly sending emails for clarification and information about specific tasks and the event.

Being an industry contact

We had sent out a call for volunteers and worked in collaboration with Swinburn University. Specifically, I attended their lecture as an industry contact and was answering questions about Speculate.

The Morning Bell Podcast

This year was my first appearance on the Morning Bell Podcast. I joined as a member of the Speculate team where we discussed the festival and speculative fiction that has left a lasting impression!

Everyone’s festival preparation

Our goal is to celebrate the genre with our guests, staff and lovers of speculative fiction. There’s a lot of work by a lot of different people, and many hands make light work! I’ve been a part of organising book launches in the past but preparing for the festival was on another level for the sheer amount of people we needed to be in contact with.

Problem Solving

It’s always a useful skill to pick up something that might cause grief later and come up with a solution! This is the first time we’re all running a festival together and keeping up communication was my task. There have been mass emails and individual ones, ones that have been drafted and looked over by multiple people before it goes out.

Books!

If you’re going to talk to all these guests, you need to read everything you can! I’ve had a long list of books to read before the festival and had already read some of our authors works. If you’re in need of recommendations, have a look at their current works!

Tomorrow the months of preparation will finally be over and the festival itself will begin. We’re excited to share everything we’ve been working so hard to get together. We hope you can join us on this spectacular day!

Writing is hard. Annoyingly hard. I think many writers can agree that we are our own worst enemies, picking apart everything that is wrong with our words.

I have rewritten one character’s story four times now, or at least, the beginning of it. I rarely get past the 5000-word mark, before hating the plot because it’s not right, despite the days of planning I do for it. I think to myself, ‘Does this fit a genre? Would people even like it?’ I try to break genre conventions and tropes, to make them more unique, but always wonder whether I should just try to make it easier for myself instead of coming up with outrageous plots and characters?

There are two core issues happening to me here – one being I simply haven’t written enough. I am still an amateur writer, struggling to find where I want my future book to be in Dymocks. The second problem, is the one I want to talk about: writing to trends.

I see the question ‘Should I write to trend?’ a lot on writing forums. After all, it could be an easy pay check, or make your chances of being picked up by a publishing house more likely.

But is it easy money? In a sense. It’s not secret that romance and erotica do extraordinarily well as ebooks. They dominate sales, and a simple search on Amazon will give you thousands of results. A writer could bomb out a romance novel, chuck it up on Amazon, and boom, you’ve just earned yourself some pocket money (note: I say pocket money here, because the reality of self publishing is you will earn very little. The people demand free ebooks, or generally only will buy them at $2.99, any more than that and you better be a bestselling author).

So sure, writing to trends can shorten the wait time for payment. No doubt when Twilight became an international success, many other vampire love stories would have sucked the life out of Amazon. I’m also sure they would have made decent money, as people were still on that vampire-high and wanted more.

Okay, so writing to trends may work for ebooks and self-publishers. What about traditional publishers? Those amazing dudes who make your pieces of paper turn into a 400-page book, with the beautiful tagline: ‘by Début author [insert name here]’. Publishers make it no secret that they’re always looking for the next trend, the next author who will make them the big bucks. So if you pay attention to the market, the book sales, analyse how people are feeling and what they are wanting, you could write the next trend. You can even analyse agents on their websites and Twitter, who will often list all the manuscripts they will instantly toss away because of the genre.

So traditional publishing could work as an option as well. They want the new trends, they want the shining author who delivers it to them. But I’m not writing this to argue that you have to write to trend to get anywhere as an author. I claim the opposite is true.

As I read through writing forums, jealous of all these people who got their work published, while simultaneously procrastinating my own writing because I’m still not happy with it, that common question pops up again and again. And the common answer is: ‘You can, but eventually you’ll hate it.’

Writing is something we love doing. Even as I slave away over a story that I’m never happy with, I still love the process. I still love the character. And though it may not be completely conventional, able to fit neatly into a little box labelled ‘sci-fi’ or ‘fantasy’, the idea of removing those aspects that I love in order to fit that box—well, that I hate.

Writing to trends becomes repetitive work. You’re pumping out the same story, the same plot, over and over again. Sure the title has a new name, characters are called something else, but you know it’s essentially the same as the last story you did. That stumps creativity.

We are our creativity. That’s what we pride ourselves on. When your English teacher said you should be an author, you beamed. When your parents said they loved your short story, you hugged them (albeit knowing they may have lied, but you didn’t care anyway). When your friends awed over your words, you laughed. And when you won that first writing competition, be it large or small, you jumped up and down and proclaimed: ‘Yes, I am a good writer!’

Eventually, I will get this damn book finished. One day I will get past those infuriating 5000 words, and keep writing. And it doesn’t matter how ridiculous it is, or if it will never get published anyway, because it will be worth it. Writing to trends is easy. But we don’t like taking the easy route. We don’t want to take the bland shortcut on the street. We want the scenic route, the one that encourages us to stop and take a moment. And if we get to the party an hour late, who cares.